Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Tauerama!: Incense Extreme review

The countdown continues for my Tauer perfumes discovery set giveaway. If you are interested, I encourage you to enter the draw here.

As its name suggests, Incense Extreme is a dry and pleasantly intense incense perfume, straightforward in its intentions, with a brace of bitter herbs at the opening. It then morphs into a very well-composed resinous frankincense and myrrh rounded out with what smell to me like cedar and roses—the immediately recognizable Tauer ones, which are distinct, as far as my nose can tell, from all other roses I have smelled. It takes on an almost tarry, leathery resonance in the drydown—at one point I was asking myself: is this more of a leather fragrance than an incense one?

Like all of Tauer’s creation, this is well-crafted, interesting, and long-lasting, with a distinct roundedness I get from all Tauer’s scents—and I love it very much. It is resinous and woody, but never loses a certain sweet floral note that keeps it approachable. I would heartily recommend Incense Extreme to any incense/aromatics lover, although at times I felt myself wishing for a little darker profile—a little more smolder in this smoke.

One final note: I can’t find the orris root in this composition at all, although the official notes name it—I wonder if this is, in fact, a really cool thing, since, as far as I can tell, orris perhaps should not be detectable when used correctly to give roundness and depth to everything else…..

4 comments:

Lovely post! Andy Tauer is a bit of genius. Reading your post has reminded me that I need to try more of his fragrances. I've tried L'Air du Desert Marocain. I'm looking forward to trying Orange Star in particular. And Incense Extreme is also worth a sniff by the sounds of it.

you know, I really think he is one. The more I smell, the more impressed I am! Hope you are feeling a little better about the twins situation. It sounds like you have a lovely family. Other people can just get stuffed, I say.

Have not yet tried this perfume, but I'm with you just in general; more smolder, please. A bit bored with incense/smoke/tobacco perfumes with wimpy smolder. Still looking for that 'second hand cigarette smoke outdoors on a cold morning as I drink coffee' perfume. Thanks for the review!

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Musing about the Good Life

Welcome to an eclectic world of aesthetic delight! This site explores what it means to prioritize a life lived sensually, with an emphasis on that most neglected of faculties, smell. Here you'll find perfume reviews and musings, recipes, bookish thoughts, and rhapsodies on all things that fill our lives with art in little, yet important, ways.